


One of the Good Ones

by SusanaR



Category: White Collar
Genre: Episode 6.3, F/M, Fake Character Death, Friendship, Future Fic, Gen, Pink Panthers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-28 12:02:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2731775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SusanaR/pseuds/SusanaR
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'I'm a con artist and you're a cop, Peter. There are only so many ways this could have ended. This is one of the good ones.' </p>
<p>There isn't anything that Neal wouldn't do, to protect the ones he loves. </p>
<p>Inspired by Keller's threats during the confrontation between Neal and Keller at the end of Episode 6.3, "Uncontrolled Variables," and by the phone conversation between Neal and Peter during episode 4.1, when Neal was on the beach in Cape Verde.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One of the Good Ones

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I'm not sure how the show is going to end, but this idea occurred to me and would not easily be dismissed. 
> 
> Quote (paraphrased (because I couldn't find the exact quote) from a statement made by Neal to Peter, when Neal speaks to Peter from the beach in Cape Verde during episode 4.1, "Wanted.") 
> 
> 'I'm a con artist and you're a cop, Peter. There are only so many ways this could have ended. This is one of the good ones.'

Keller may have been wrong, but that wasn't a chance Neal could afford to take. The only way for the people in Neal Caffrey's life to be safe, once he left the game, was for Neal Caffrey to die. 

Taking on the Pink Panthers had always been a dangerous gamble. Neal had originally planned to win. His plan changed, and became "win, and cash out." 

He didn't take any of the federal reserve money. Oh, he thought about it. He always thought about it. Neal was an addict; his poisons of choice were adrenaline and beauty. 

It had to be flawless. The Panthers taken down; Keller neutralized; Peter AND Mozzie fooled. Neal knew that the last might be the hardest part. 

Neal didn't have plans, not concrete ones. The Panthers were too good, Keller was too good, Peter was too good, for that to work. Mozzie was good, one of the best, but he'd never expect Neal to leave him behind. 

Neal could only leave because Elizabeth was pregnant. She would need Peter, and Mozzie would be there for her, as well. Distracted, all three of them. June might figure it out, but June understood the importance of making a separate peace. 

The moment came. Guns were out; Neal put himself in the way of Woodford's. He'd let Mozzie believe he was planning to steal the money, that guilt over doing so was pushing him towards something dire. Peter knew, after Rebecca, that Neal wasn't afraid to die. 

It was first-rate theater. Neal wished, sometimes, that he hadn't been too worried about making sure everything went right to enjoy it. 

The angle was just right, Peter's attention on Keller when Woodford shot Neal. The bullet went through his leg - he hadn't planned on that. He was almost too distracted to pop the blood packet on that thigh. But it was the same leg that MacLeish had shot in Cape Verde, and Neal held on long enough to remember. 

Diana came through for him, and gave him the right drugs in the ambulance. There almost wasn't time. If Peter hadn't had Woodford to process, and Keller to square away, there wouldn't have been. Peter didn't want to leave Neal's side. Neal didn't really want Peter to leave, either, but once Neal made a decision, he was committed. 

Diana had been one of the weakest points of Neal's loose collection of ideas. She was willing to bend the FBI rules, but she was loyal to Peter. She was also a mother. That was what Neal used to convince her to help him, in order to keep the future baby Burke safe. 

Neal was in the morgue before Peter was done with Keller. Paperwork was swapped. The corpse of a young motorcyclist and Neal's rear-most lower molar were sent together to the incinerator. Neal walked out the door as a janitor, leaning on a mop, a pail of water spilled down his leg to hide the bleeding. 

He'd pickpocketed one of the passports Rebecca had made for him, before it had a chance to go into FBI evidence. It had been an instinct to do so, rather than a plan. Neal had always been impulsive, but now he had to be methodical, careful. He didn't go to his own funeral. He didn't even read about it until he was far, far away. 

Neal's instinct was to go somewhere warm, so he went to a cold place, first. Navosibirsk, in southern Siberia. Neal liked living the high life, but he could make do without. He still looked younger than his age, and not at all out of place in the university setting. And it wasn't forever. He still had a few caches left that Mozzie didn't know about, one of them in Prague, but he didn't go there for months. He waited to visit Prague until the week that Elizabeth was due. Neal quietly fenced, or even more tracelessly returned, only those items which had never been connected to him. Elizabeth had a baby girl, Georgiana Maureen. Maureen had been Peter's mother. Neal's middle name was George. He wondered what nickname she would end up with. If Peter and Elizabeth had asked, Neal would have steered them away from Georgiana. 

After Prague, Neal went to Montreal, then Los Angeles. Buenos Aires, then Rio de Janeiro, San Sebastian, Caen, and Sao Paolo. He never stayed put for very long, never put down roots. For the first time, he wasn't trying to steal, or con anything or anyone. He had enough to live on, for awhile. He did a lot of painting. Inspiration and a new, original style of his own came into focus at last. 

If someone had really been determined to track Neal, they could have done so by purchases of art supplies and climate-controlled storage space. But it was unlikely that anyone would think to do so; Neal had never painted like this before. It was a point of pride, to him, that he could live without stealing, and the painting distracted him. It was a good distraction from loneliness, as well. 

Peter finally took a promotion to a desk job when Georgie Burke (Neal learned her nickname from a news story about Georgie's Mommy & Me class meeting with the Mayor) was two years old. The funniest part was that it was Mozzie with Georgie, in the photo accompanying the story, because Elizabeth had been interviewing at the Met, that day. 

White Collar without Peter was still successful, but it wasn't the same. Diana sat in Peter's old seat, while Jones went over to another department. Neal began investigating lost artwork, under the radar and very quietly. It paid handsomely, and if a rumor of Neal made its way to New York's White Collar division, well, Diana already knew that he was still alive. 

It wasn't Diana, or Peter, or even Mozzie who found him. It was Sara. Being with her again was intoxicating, but they wanted different things. They always had. They parted friends, again, and Sara kept her silence. If Neal had gone back to stealing for profit, she might have spoken up, but Neal never did. He never needed to. His work paid well, and then his paintings began to sell. Sara helped him, with that, and with commissions to provide excellent forgeries for her clients to display in the public areas of their homes and offices, so that the originals could stay safe in the bank. He helped her, too. There were few forgers who could match Neal's skill. 

This hadn't been the ending that Neal wanted, when he left jail to work for Peter, lost Kate, and began to dream of the white picket fence (or rather, June's studio and a legal job with Peter). But he had his art, free and original at last. In losing his life, he'd found his style. 

Neal never knew what it was - the paintings, the legal reproductions, or the investigations - that brought him to Peter's attention, but something did. Peter began searching, and Neal felt the echoes of that. 

He traveled to Chicago, and sent a postcard. Just one sentence. "This is one of the good ways." He hoped that Peter would remember Cape Verde - or Elizabeth would remember it for him - and let Neal stay lost.

**Author's Note:**

> Please forgive the errors, discontinuities, and impossibilities in this story. It was written in one night, and if I'd put it aside, I never would have finished it.


End file.
